spe­cial­ists said weeks of ad­di­tion­al work lie ahead, in­clud­ing a ma­jor re­con­fig­u­ra­tion of the com­puter hard­ware, if the $630 mil­lion site, Health­care.gov, is to ac­com­mo­date the ex­pect­ed flood of peo­ple seek­ing to buy health in­sur­ance. With­out the ad­di­tion­al changes, ex­perts pre­dict, the web­site may con­tinue to crash dur­ing pe­ri­ods of peak use.
Be­yond the prospect of po­ten­tial de­lays for con­sumers, in­sur­ers warn that prob­lems re­main in the in­visi­ble “back end” that trans­mits en­roll­ment in­for­ma­tion to them. That da­ta has been plagued by in­ac­cu­ra­cies, in­sur­ers say. Ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials have been un­will­ing to dis­close the er­ror rate.
As late as Wednes­day, the site still con­tin­ued to slow down when 30,000 us­ers tried to log on si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, ac­cord­ing to project spe­cial­ists. A batch of hard­ware up­grades and soft­ware fix­es sched­uled for this week­end, ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials say, will al­low the site to han­dle 50,000 si­mul­ta­neous us­ers, as promised, by Dec. 1, which is Sun­day.